The sport of alpine skiing is practiced in a wide variety of snow conditions from soft, deep, “bottomless” powder to hard-packed snow and solid ice. This wide range of snow conditions actually encompasses two totally distinct states of the snow: fluid and solid. Each of these two distinct states actually mandates totally different ski equipment.
Devices for moving in a fluid medium must be designed to be buoyant, like a boat, or create lift, like an airplane wing. Conversely, devices designed for a firm surface typically employ means to solidly engage the surface while comprising means to conform to surface irregularities like a military tank tread.
Clearly a military tank and a boat are two distinct devices with little in common, yet the vast majority of recreational alpine skiers attempt to address the distinct solid and fluid states of the snow with a single device—the conventional alpine ski. In reality, there should be two discrete devices, each designed for the specific condition.
Avid, expert skiers are aware of this dichotomy and indeed often employ very different skis for each of these conditions. Firm and hard-packed conditions require fairly stiff skis with significant camber that provide tip and tail pressure to facilitate carving. While this ski design provides excellent performance on firm snow, it is totally inappropriate in powder conditions, as the stiff, cambered tip will dive into the snow instead of floating on top of it.
Conversely, soft snow and powder conditions require a soft flexing ski that incorporates a raised or “rockered” tip similar to the prow of a boat. This tip design keeps the ski from diving into the snow while the soft flex allows the ski to bend and thus evenly pressure the entire length of the ski against the snow for stability and control.
There have been attempts to create a single ski that can reasonably be adapted to the two distinct snow conditions. One design basically starts with a firm-snow carving type ski and adds a mechanical “switch” that can be manually activated to raise the tip of the ski into a rocker configuration. In reality, this is very inconvenient as the skier must stop and take the skis off or reach down in order to switch both skis into the opposite mode every time a transition from firm to soft is encountered and vice-versa.
Another approach that has been tried basically comprises a relatively short carving ski or snowblade with conventional camber but with an extended tip and tail region that is “rockered”. This compromised design only uses the central cambered region of the ski when on a firm surface as the raised tip and tail are in the air, off the snow. Thus on a groomed slope this ski has the undesirable swing weight of a long ski with the instability of an inordinately short ski. Additionally, this design is also a compromise in the soft powder, as the stiff center section does not provide a uniform flex pattern.
The ideal and uncompromised solution would be a ski that responds to the snow condition, transitioning automatically to a soft rocker configuration in powder and a firm, cambered carving configuration on compacted groomed snow.